Give me cows … lots of cows!

Give me cows … lots of cows!

Educated Incapacity

The trillion dollar hoax

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            In Texas A&M trials, the unthinkable is taking place.

Hamburger from grass fed cattle isn’t safer, healthier, or more palatable than hamburger produced from those corn fed, flatulent launching, confinement lounging fatties that are being accused of poisoning our nation’s clean water supplies. In fact, the opposite may be rearing its scientific, unbiased head.

As an example, measured oleic acid (the acid shown to reduce bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol), has been measured to be 32% higher in the fatties than from the free ranging leanies. The leanies are also producing more saturated and trans-fats.

Ohhhhh …

Before all of this gives somebody the heebie-jeebies, though, an article from the March journal Annals of Internal Medicine may throw some cold water on all of it. The entire forced diatribe since 1961 promoting the evils of beef may wind up being not the multi-billion dollar hoax many of us have long known it to be, but more … trillions of dollars.

Educated Incapacity

Futurist Herman Kahn invented the phrasing, but Ron Arnold brought it to a broader audience. Arnold, operating out of the Seattle area, used the expression describing liberal journalists who have been “taught to be blind” so they don’t have to look into major issues of our time that run countercurrent to the standards of their liberal enclaves.

Educated incapacity is their chronic ailment. They suffer from this seemingly terminal anomaly.

The condition is the “learned inability to understand or even perceive a problem much less (suggest) a solution”. Daily, we are learning of the length and breadth of the cultural gyrations this malady has forced upon us. In an era that education is purported to be continuous and cutting edge, the ability to rationalize anything aside from an entrenched paradigm is largely nonexistent.

Arnold used the model of Big Green to expound upon the condition, but, universally, the same forces of progressivism permeate all productive deficit disorders of our society. This certainly spans politics. It also includes government, conservation, health, education, journalism, and too much of science.

Those who actually create a physical product are becoming the exception and not the rule, and they are the primary targets of … the educated incapacitators.

The genesis

The name is Ancel Benjamin Keys.

Keys set about studying the dietary conditions that seemed to promote longevity. One phase of his quest was to detail the diet of peasants from the Mediterranean island of Crete. Another was to determine what was taking place in places like Yugoslavia, Italy and Finland that contributed to long lives.

The length of time from commencement of the work to conclusion of results spanned from the end of World War II to 1961. It was then Keys landed a position on the nutritional committee of the American Heart Association (AHA). The AHA, of course, was hugely influential and it afforded a stage of gigantic proportions for Keys.

There was some skepticism on the part of AHA in the Keys premise that animal fats were the root cause of most afflictions, but the organization succumbed to his hypothesis. Their decision was based largely on the absence of parallel studies defending animal fats. Since there was no rebuttal, the Key work stood without comparative review. The consensus was derived by default.

Fats, most specifically saturated fats, were labeled detrimental to health. Beef was nominated to the unbecoming position as the ultimate vector in the spread of the underlying disease complex.

By 1977, the progressive bias was gaining critical mass. It was then a Harvard nutritionist and Keys protégé, Mark Hegsted, convinced a Senate committee to recommend the Keys diet. This was made official and universally emphatic when the USDA adopted Keys based guidelines in 1980.

The storm trooping incapacitators were in business and beef was declared public enemy Numero Uno.

The malicious truth

Meanwhile, attempts to duplicate the Keys findings were constantly running into difficulties. In fact, a reported one billion dollars was burned trying to duplicate and dissect the premises of his so called research. Troubling findings took place. It started with his work on Crete.

The initial, critical Crete research was done on post war island residents when beef was not available because of war induced rationing. The absence of beef was a temporal condition not a permanent one and certainly not a cultural preference. Furthermore, the survey was done during Lent when the islanders were foregoing their limited supplies of meat and cheese for the Easter season.

Keys’s assessment was corrupted. He purposefully picked and chose his study groups. He excluded France where healthy omelet and beef eaters drank gallons of alcohol to enhance their culinary experiences. He also bypassed Switzerland, Sweden and West Germany where abundant fat consumers didn’t suffer from high rates of heart disease.

The truth would reveal he picked and chose his study replicates to conform to his own biases and to substantiate a desired outcome. Moreover, the hoax was ultimately predicated not on the data he represented as 655 samples, but a few dozen men.

The beef industry was made villainous, the participants slandered, and the United States government underwrote a war on beef of historic proportions. Educated incapacity facilitated the assault, shaped the public perception, and then frolicked and toasted their good work to their like minded fold.

“Personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias derailed nutrition policy over the past half-century”, and … it’s killing people.

The emerging science

The Texas A&M work is hugely welcome, but it also demonstrates the lingering expanse of corrupted societal norms now emanating from the tenets of false science attached to the entrenched Keys dietary recommendations. In his recent article in BEEF, TAMU researcher Stephen B. Smith makes a statement that highlights the point.

His sentence, “Ground beef from grass-fed cattle naturally contains more omega-3 fatty acids than from grain-fed cattle (three times as much), but is higher in saturated and trans fats” subtly suggests the enduring Keys premise that saturated fats are bad. That is what society has long been led to believe and that is what science has ostensibly blessed in terms of dietary recommendations in order to avoid heart disease among other ailments. That is counter cantering to the revealed study published by the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study also suggests there have been extensive unintended consequences. One example is the outcome of switching from fatty meats to carbohydrates. Excessive carbohydrates have led to epidemic proportions of obesity, type 2 diabetes and the very heart diseases that were blamed on fats.

Another outcome is the massive switch to vegetable oils. Studies are now indicating that people consuming large amounts of those oils are more vulnerable to cancer and anomalies like gall stones. They are also more likely to die from suicides. Speculation suggests that psychological behavior disorders might be related to brain chemistry caused by these dietary changes. It may be caused by fatty acid imbalances and the depletion of cholesterol.

Vegetable oils are also known to create cirrhosis of the liver and even early death. That outcome was certainly not what Americans bargained for when they were convinced to give up butter and lard.

Women may be killing themselves in ever greater numbers by adhering rigorously to these dietary guidelines. One example is the insistence of maintaining low cholesterol levels. Studies now reveal HIGH levels of total cholesterol are equating to longer lives at ages over 50.

The long and the short of this debacle is that Americans are growing sicker and fatter under the nation’s dietary guidelines that trace lineage back to the so called scientists like Keys. The half century of vilifying and foregoing the consumption of beef, eggs, and whole fat dairy products has now become a modern day American deception.

Who among us have heard about this nutritional study?

The problem we face is the sanctity offered by societal defenses that protect the hordes suffering from educational incapacity. We are also churning these sophisticated automatons out in not just increasing numbers but accelerating rates of increase.

There is too much invested in their existence and their reserved fiefdom to expect self correction. Who involved would step up and admit the horrors of this debacle? Who among them would even understand the plight they have wrought?

Ron Arnold best expressed the reach of the institutional framework of this new order populated by the likes of Ancel Benjamin Keys. He wrote, “The … movement is a mature, highly developed network of top leadership stewarding vast institutional memory, a fiercely loyal cadre of competent social and political operatives and millions of high demographic members ready to mobilize as needed.”

He is right, and … America is paying the absurd price.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Someday a treatise must be written on the endless endurance and the immensity of societal contribution by the cow. This society is not yet ready to understand those implications.”